Well, I have always tinkered with the idea of making my own printed circuit board. I read and researched everything from power layouts to interference avoidance. Even looking for tips and tricks.
I made my first "circuit board" by making traces with a knife on a solid copper board. This was successful, but way less than ideal.
Many years pass and I decide to take another look at making another board by etching. This is a lenthy process and I was doing it on the cheap and it didn't turn out as I envisioned.
Many more years pass and again, I decided to take another gander at this. This time, focused on having the boards professionally made. I had an idea of making a dot matrix style LED clock display to replace the four digit, 7-segment, display I had setup with the Arduino clock.
I assembled an rgb LED display and wired it to the Arduino, re-wrote the code the the dot matrix (vs 7-segment) and was happy with it. Although, it did take up ~50 i/o pins from the arduino to drive this display. So, let me throw some shift registers in there and drop that to six!
I found and played with roughly six different pcb softwares before settling on one that I liked. PCBWeb is the one pcb design software that I settled with.
I had to design two dual-layer boards to use the through-hole components that I had. I got them finished and was talking with a co-worker about it when he asked, "Can you put all of this on one board?".
I told him that I couldn't with the components that I have. If I did do it on one board, all components would have to be surface-mount.
So, back to the drawing board to select components and design a single four-layer board.
I finished laying out most of the board a few times, because I was finding errors in components selections. Some weren't available in the quantaties I wanted. Some weren't available in a resonable amount of time... etc, etc.
I got all that sorted out and got the design finished. Now was selecting a pcb house to make them for me that wasn't going to cost a fortune. As this is my first pcb to be made.
At first, it looked as though my only options were some manufacturers overseas. So, I searched only in the US and I found one about four miles from my house! Circuits West, Inc. had a 4-layer special for $59/board (3 min). I checked thier design requirements and my design fell well within what they could do. I placed my order with them. I also placed an order for the components from DigiKey.
Four days later, I picked them up. My first professionally made pcbs!
I got the parts in about the same time I got the boards and I started testing the board. All looked good. I started soldering the parts into place.
I was testing sections of the LEDs as I got them into place. I found a few issues and corrected them in the PCB layout software and corrected the pcb.
After all was in place and double-checked for shorts...it was time to power this up. It lit up just fine! I had to make some tweaks to the program and it ran great!
This was an experience that I enjoyed.
